Chapter Themes


By 1960 there were 4 million American students pursuing higher education, and in the decade that followed, the number doubled. Although most American youths of the 1960s embraced neither political nor cultural radicalism, there was an insurgent minority. In 1962 Students for a Democratic Society issued its Port Huron Statement offering a broad critique of American society. They and thousands of other students were radicalized by what they perceived as impersonality and rigidity on the campus, insensitivity in the nation's bureaucracy, materialism, racism, and above all, the escalation of the war in Vietnam in 1965. In the spring of 1968, at least forty thousand students on some one hundred campuses took part in demonstrations against war and racism. In 1969 came the March Against Death in Washington. Violence in the spring of 1970 marked the effective end of the students' movement as a political force. Demonstrations at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi led to the death of six students. The nation, reacting with horror, revealed a deep division between those who blamed repression and those who blamed the students' lack of loyalty. The New Left went into decline, and former antiwar activists turned to other causes such as environmentalism, consumer advocacy, the anti-nuclear movement, and the women's movement. But the student radicalism of the Vietnam years had stirred the fears and resentments of many Americans whose response was growing conservatism, even as it had spurred the growth of wider public opposition to the war.

The same sense of alienation that had drawn some youths to radical politics led others to cultural rebellion. The members of this counterculture, the "hippies," rejected traditional notions of achievement and responsibility. They, experimented with drugs and listened to new forms of popular music., and scandalized the middle class with obscene language and sexual promiscuity. In 1967 a pilgrimage of "flower children" to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco (see "A Place in Time" for Chapter 3129) began as a celebration of the new age. It brought in its wake drug dealers and violence.e. In 1969 nearly four hundred thousand young people gathered at Woodstock and defied the Establishment with three days of music, drugs, and sex.

Those Americans not members of the youth culture were also affected by changing mores. Increasingly explicit men's magazines were on the market. A new sexual permissiveness was made possible in part by easy access to new contraceptives such as the Pill. Gay groups argued for equal rights. The Pill made contraception easier. The Supreme Court struck down state laws limiting the right to abortion. More and more young couples chose to live together without getting married. For married couples, the divorce rate rose precipitously. Gay groups argued for equal rights. The public association of the counterculture with student protest swelled a growing tide of conservatism among many Americans.

For some Americans in the 1960s, this was sexual liberation. For most others it signaled a moral decay that encouraged growing conservatism in defense of traditional values.

The Tet offensive by the North Vietnamese early in 1968 altered the nature of the war. The American people were jolted by the size of the attack, and "hawks" declined in numbers. President Johnson determined to initiate negotiations to end the war. Moreover, he announced his decision not to run again for president. His departure left the way open for Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey. The nation grieved at the assassination of Kennedy as many had a few months earlier when Dr. King had been assassinated.

Disarray among the Democrats was intensified by antiwar demonstrations and their repression at the Democratic convention in Chicago. The Republicans won a narrow victory in 1968, but with third-party candidate George Wallace taken into consideration, it seemed clear that a new conservative majority had supplanted the long-dominant New Deal coalition.

President Nixon hoped to get the United States out of Vietnam and begin a new era of détente with the communist. He announced the Nixon Doctrine, redefining America's role in the Third World as helpful partner rather than military protector. Nixon understood American war weariness both at home and among the troops in Vietnam, but he was determined to achieve "peace with honor." Nixon replaced American fighting forces with South Vietnamese troops, sent Henry Kissinger to negotiate directly with the North Vietnamese, and authorized drastic escalation of American bombing--even, secretly, into neighboring Cambodia and Laos--to force the communists to compromise. In 1970 a joint American-South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia was undertaken, widening the war and stimulating protests at home. Another North Vietnamese offensive was met by further intensified bombing. In 1973 the Paris Accords ended hostilities that had cost billions of dollars and millions of lives. Veterans returned to a cold reception in a deeply divided nation.

Armed clashes between the Soviets and the Chinese in 1969 along their common border and the disengagement of American troops from Vietnam gave Nixon an opportunity to open relations with China that might constrain Soviet influence in Asia. Nixon's visit to China in 1972 led to a resumption of diplomatic relations in 1979. Equally significant, Nixon was able to initiate the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), which led to major arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union.

In 1974 the Nixon administration shifted U.S. foreign policy from its traditional all-out support for Israel to a more evenhanded relationship with contending Middle Eastern nations. Henry Kissinger negotiated successfully with them, increased American influence in the Middle East, and brought to an end an Arab-states embargo on oil shipments to the United States and its allies that had driven up prices sharply. The Nixon administration also sought to protect American economic and strategic interests and counter Soviet influence by giving support to repressive but friendly regimes, regardless of their domestic policies, and by providing assistance in the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende. American policy remained committed to containment of communist influence and to a new emphasis on negotiations with the Soviet Union for arms limitations.

At home President Nixon initially approved a moderate extension of Great Society programs. Later he sought to restrain federal spending for social services and deal with congressional effort to protect the environment. The president employed a number of tactics designed to deal with a sluggish economy and simultaneously rising inflation. The recession eased, but inflation remained a major problem. Nixon took every opportunity to dramatize his tough stand on law and order, to affirm traditional morality, and to reject radical activism. To reverse the liberalism of the Warren court, Nixon tried to fill the Court with strict constructionists.

In the election of 1972, Nixon portrayed the Democrats as radical subverters of traditional values. His opponent was George McGovern, the Senate's most outspoken dove. Nixon sought every possible vote. His operatives planned to wiretap the telephones in the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington. Nixon carried the election overwhelmingly, but little by little the truth about Watergate emerged. In 1973 the Senate established a special committee to investigate alleged election misdeeds. Secret audiotapes obtained from the White House revealed the degree of the president's involvement. The House Judiciary Committee began impeachment proceedings, and Richard Nixon became the first American president to resign.